Musk and Trump Part II: The Dogs That Caught the Car
When it comes to Elon Musk and owning and running Twitter, the new boss is like the proverbial dog that caught the car: no one knows exactly how he did it or what he plans to do with it.
Only in this case we do know how he did it. He offered to pay forty-four billion dollars to buy the popular social media site, then tried like hell to back out of the deal once it became apparent what a historic mistake he was making.
But it was too late. Musk was faced with two awful alternatives: buy a hellsite he had spent months publicly disparaging for an insanely inflated amount or spend years in court trying to finagle his way out of the deal.
In that respect, he’s like Donald Trump when he was elected president in 2016. Like Musk, Trump REALLY did not want the hassle of having to actually do the job that he aggressively sought.
He clearly thought that running for President would be great publicity for himself and his various businesses, primarily The Apprentice. But the presidency is a very difficult job that Trump was uniquely unqualified for, in the same way that Musk is unqualified to run Twitter.
Then Trump got elected, in violent defiance of common sense and God’s will, and seemed utterly, utterly lost.
But Trump could not concede that he was in over his head and had no idea what he was doing. He had to pretend that he was qualified and engaged and knew exactly what he was doing.
I’m sure you all remember, but Trump’s first months in office were utter chaos. He would do things like ban Muslims from coming into the country or tweet that trans people could no longer serve in the military.
I can only imagine how horrifying it would be to be a trans patriot and devote your entire life to serving your country and perfecting your skills as a soldier and then have some transphobic reality television show host decide that, actually, you should’t be able to have the job you’ve trained for your entire life.
You probably also remember the “Covfefe” incident. Trump wanted to begin a Tweet, “Despite the constant negative press coverage” but instead ended that sentiment with “covfefe.”
Trump deleted the tweet, as one does when they make a stupid mistake but press secretary Sean Spicer, who I would pity if he were not an instrument for evil, insisted that the tweet was not a mistake or a typo, insisting, “I think the President and a small group of people know exactly what he meant.”
Trump, being the weirdo that he is, weaponized covfefe. It became an inside joke/point of pride among his followers. Instead of conceding that, like everyone in the universe, he sometimes makes mistakes, Trump instead insisted that it was the crooked Fake News trying to make him look bad, but the special, special people who were tuned to Trump’s wavelength (AKA people who are also wired on Aderrall 24/7) understood him.
Despite Trump and Spicer’s insistence to the contrary, it was obvious that covfefe was a meaningless typo. I make a lot of meaningless typos myself so I am VERY familiar with them.
Musk has similarly been trying to insist that every stupid mistake he’s making at Twitter was not only EXTREMELY intentional but also wildly successful.
It sure feels like Twitter has become the Fyre Festival of social media since Musk took over. It’s.a flaming shit show of a website. Yet Musk keeps insisting that it’s NEVER been more popular or good and that everything is happening exactly according to plan.
When Musk reinstated Trump’s Twitter account, for example, he clearly expected/hoped that Trump would ooze gratitude (despite being the messiest, most ungrateful, bitch in the history of messy, ungrateful bitches) and give the site a huge boost in traffic, popularity and media attention by tweeting compulsively.
When Trump insulted Musk and said that Twitter was a poor substitute for Truth Social, the Tesla mogul pretended that he did not care, and that reinstating Trump was all about justice and democracy and fairness and not him desperately wanting the reality show buffoon to play with him in his digital sandbox and tell the world that he’s funny and cool and a free speech warrior.
While Twitter has burned, Musk has hammered away at his fiddle, insisting to everyone that, actually, Twitter has never been more popular, relevant or lucrative.
Musk, who is over fifty years old, has several dozen children, and is the richest man in the world, has assumed the role of a pathetic juvenile troll lobbing inane insults at anyone who dares suggests that the Emperor has no clothes and also that his tweets are fucking pathetic.
The Tesla mogul can pay someone to be funny on his behalf. Yet he he insists on doing a pathetic open mic routine that only his cultists and acolytes pretend is not deeply sad.
Trump may or may not have known what he was doing as a real estate mogul and television personality, just as Musk MAY have been good at running an electric car company. But they’re clueless and embarrassing at running the United States and Twitter, respectively.
Hopefully they will destroy each other, and take Kanye West them, albeit not in a way that will lead to Ron DeSantis becoming the next president of the United States.
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